Revenue collected from Duluth’s tourism industry sailed to a new high in tourism tax in 2010.

But can it score an encore in 2011 without a midsummer armada of tall ships?

Revenue collected from Duluth hotel-motel and food and beverage taxes — a barometer of the health of the city’s tourism industry — totaled $7.79 million last year, up 7.6 percent from the $7.24 million collected in 2009, according to data released Tuesday by the city.

The $7.79 million is the most in tourism taxes that’s ever been collected by the city.

While some of the increased revenue is from a new food and beverage tax that began in mid-2008 to pay for the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center Expansion, it also reflects steady growth over the past five years, City Treasurer Brian Hansen said.

Still, Hansen said the growth from year to year wasn’t as large as what the city saw in 2006 and 2007.

“2010 was a good year,” Hansen said. “Are we experiencing the kind of growth that we experienced pre-recession? No. We were impacted (by the recession) in 2008. We were impacted in all of 2009. And we were impacted in 2010.”

One factor behind the numbers was the biggest tourism event in Duluth’s history, the Tall Ships Festival at the end of July and beginning of August. Terry Mattson, president of VisitDuluth, said that event brought a quarter of a million spectators, including visitors from 43 states and three Canadian provinces.

“You look at one month in particular, July, on the lodging side, which is a peak month where we’re driving business at or near capacity traditionally, and to be

20 percent or more above in earnings in a peak month is really unheard of,” Mattson said. “Our tall ships event alone can be credited with a monumental boost in the bottom line for the month of July.”

Todd Torvinen, president and chief financial officer of ZMC Hotels, which operates the Edgewater Resort & Water Park, The Inn on Lake Superior and Best Western Downtown in Duluth, said the festival helped, even in a traditionally good month, because it allowed hotels and motels to raise their rates slightly. Also, the ships arrived in the middle of the week, a time when not all rooms normally would be booked.

“Even in the middle of the summer we have rooms that don’t traditionally sell out at every hotel,” Torvinen said. “I think the Tall Ships brought in more people to fill some of those vacant rooms that otherwise might not get filled.”

Last year’s growth came in spite of a drop in major conventions, Mattson said — about a dozen fewer than the year before. And the overall growth exceeded tourism industry growth nationally and Minnesota.

That was true for hotels and motels in particular, where the percentage growth in Duluth was just under 9 percent, Torvinen said.

“Overall, the nation as a whole was up by 5 1/2 to 6 percent on its revenues, so to see Duluth up by 9 percent is a real kudo to the industry,” Torvinen said.

Hotel and motel revenue was helped by the opening of the Marriott Residence Inn toward the end of the year, Torvinen said. That added 92 rooms to the previous supply of 2,600 rooms.

And the weather cooperated toward the end of the year, Torvinen said. Ample early snowfalls brought more people to Bentleyville, got the skiing season off to a good start and allowed the Duluth National Snocross to be staged on Thanksgiving weekend as scheduled, unlike the year before. Even the fall leaf-peeping season was better in 2010 than in 2009, Torvinen said.

As for what 2011 will be like, Mattson was conservative in his projections.

“I would think it would be somewhere in the 3 percent to 5 percent growth category,” he said. “That would be my speculation, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

VisitDuluth plans to bring two tall ships to the port this summer and create an event that includes bands and other forms of entertainment, Mattson said. Still, he acknowledges, “It’s probably unrealistic to think we can beat (last July) without that kind of tall ships event.”

Hansen said that while he’s not involved in tourism promotion, the growth of the economy bodes well for continued tourism growth.

“Is it going to be a gangbuster year? No, because the economy is still sluggish,” Hansen said. “But we would anticipate that 2011 will be better than 2010.”

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